Forest’s Focus on the Future: Artificial Intelligence in Accounting
Mountain View, CA: January 2, 2023
Between now and the end of the year, you will receive many emails from companies touting their 2023 accomplishments. Forest Systems could do that, too.
We’d rather share something different with you: our focus on the future.
Join us in celebrating all that’s to come for you, our clients and friends, in 2024.
YOUR PARTNER IN UNDERSTANDING A.I. IN ACCOUNTING
As the world has come to realize over the last year in particular, artificial intelligence (A.I.) will have a tremendous impact on many aspects of accounting in 2024.
While there are many ways A.I. can be and will be applied in financial services, one of the biggest impacts will be how to move or transfer your important information from documents into the accounting system. A properly-designed accounting system that uses A.I. to move your information safely will bring efficiency and value to this critical process.
The Forest Systems team sees this opportunity – and we’re already working to solve it, creating an enhanced and efficient system that has the power to process not only paperwork, but also accounting in the fastest and safest way possible.
HOW WE WILL DO IT
Let’s start with your documents
Applying A.I. to bring efficiencies to the accounting process starts with how we manage your documents. To perform functions on and with your documents, you need to store your documents in such a way that the system can analyze documents using the proper A.I. model.
Financial professionals like you manage many documents including:
- Reports from Private Equity firms such as Capital Call letters, quarter performance statements and K-1s
- Vendor tax information such as W-9s and 1099s
- Vendor invoices and statements
- Real estate documents such as leases, property tax bills, and capital improvements
- Payroll tax reports
- Documents related to charitable donations
- Numerous tax returns
In Forest’s Enterprise Plus Edition, we include the ability to upload and manage documents in our platform. All your documents will be downloaded, saved, and stored on the Forest platform for future reference and access by our A.I. system.
Retrieve your data by using Forest’s proprietary “Prompt Engineering” feature
The benefit to Forest clients comes when the platform extracts data from your documents and prepares it to be easily entered for your accounting. This process can now be accomplished efficiently using various A.I. applications that read your documents and recognize accounting information.
Making this possible for our clients was no small feat for our development team, but we are doing it. Now, extraction of information is controlled through our proprietary “Prompt Engineering” feature.
Our system “learns” your documents to find the correct information and present it with the proper labels for your review, saving you time, energy, and attention.
Human ingenuity at the appropriate step in the process
Turning over your documents and accounting to A.I. can be a scary and challenging endeavor for accounting teams who have historically relied solely on human talent and ingenuity for these tasks. Trusting A.I. is a new opportunity – and challenge – ahead.
Forest wants you to use A.I. at the appropriate step – AND then use your team’s human ingenuity at the right step, too, versus every step in the process.
The third step in the process is for the Forest platform to present the extracted information to you in the form of entries into your accounting records. It must present transactions for your review and approval. This step is important because the A.I. model is not perfect at extracting the information and building the journal entries. It cannot be relied upon to be correct every time. Your review will confirm that the entries are ready to be posted in your accounting system.
Making this work smoothly has been a tremendous challenge for our development team, and we look forward to working with you and your team to ensure you are using your human talent at just the right time and point in the process.
WHAT WE ARE EXCITED FOR IN 2024
Meet Forest Integrations
In January 2024, we will launch the Forest Integrations module that will include all of the capabilities described above.
This introduction will include:
- A series of training webinars
- Exclusive access to this new module of the platform
- Special pricing for the first six months as we all learn together how to make this new technology even better and more valuable
We look forward to taking this journey with you – we will connect with you in the new year to share more about this opportunity.
As always, thank you for trusting the Forest team.